Migrating Servers

What an experience this has been. I hope to write a comprehensive post at some point about the experience, but suffice to say, it’s been quite the crash course on Apache, Debian, and DNS.

It all started with some curiosity, in which I purchased a Slice, and began poking around with the many tutorials they offer. Ultimately, Owen provided me with his LAMPME script that did the basic setup for a debain, apache2, PHP 5, MySQL 5 set up, using mod_vhost (please don’t quote me on any of this 😀 ), which sorta got me going. I got a bit sidetracked, and confused with setting up phpMyAdmin (I’m not that comfortable with CLI yet), and let the whole thing just sit, unused for a month or so. However, due to the persistent problems with MediaTemple grid-servers, I vowed to stop shelling out money to them for the hassles. If my sites go down, I want to be the one to blame, and no one else. Besides, it’s high time that I learn more about this aspect of web development.

So, armed with help fromSkippy, and some new found confidence, I got everything set up so as to have a basic understanding of how/where things go, and started moving domains. I’m just about done, with this being one of the last. If anyone notices anything wonky, assuming I have visitors, please let me know.

Also which is quite cool so far, is that I’m going to deploy the multi-site functionality of Habari to minimize the number of actual installs I have on the server, as I run everything off of head, this means less outdated installs. Right now I’m looking at having just 2 actual installations, with everything else running off of those. So far it’s worked out fine, though it took a little playing to get paths for things like images and files sorted out. More on that later. Certainly something that needs more attention, especially as silos mature.